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I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Friday, June 10, 2016

I Can't Help But Think We Just Aren't Applying Ourselves

ISIL is under attack on a broad front. Why do we say it will take so long to finally defeat them in Iraq?

ISIL is losing ground in their caliphate, with both American- and Russian-supported offensives in Syria, American/Coalition-led offensives in Iraq that have been prying areas from jihadi control, and Western-backed efforts in Libya where ISIL's hold around Sirte is also under pressure lately.

The Caliphate is having tough days, clearly.

Yet as tough as it is to dig out jihadi terrorists and end the support they get within Islam, it should be a fairly easy task to deprive a relatively small force of jihadi light infantry (20 or 25,000 across Syria and Iraq and several thousand more in Libya) backed by car bombs and mine fields of their control of actual territory.

The only delay should be in figuring out how to hit the jihadis with a maximum blow to kill as many as we can while they are concentrated before the survivors scatter to regroup as terrorists operating within friendly (or frightened) Moslem regions.

Turkey is in the midst of a major shift in its policy on Syria. Ankara has long opposed the Syrian Kurds because it sees them as affiliates of the Turkish Kurdish separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). But now it has reached a compromise with Washington, in which it is willing to accept a role for the Democratic Party of Syria (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), in the fight against the Islamic State.

Ah, the fear of angering their old foe Russia and their main ally America did wonders, it seems, to adjust Turkish attitudes.

With all the forces arrayed against ISIL, you'd think we wouldn't let them hang around so long. No wonder the Arab world is rife with conspiracy theories that America created ISIL.

In Libya, IS militants were fleeing their stronghold of Sirte as forces loyal to a U.N.-brokered government advanced, with some fighters reportedly cutting off beards and long hair to blend in with civilians.

The anti-IS offensives posed a significant challenge to the extremist group as it tries to stave off multiple attacks across parts of Syria and Iraq, where it declared a so-called caliphate in 2014, and in more recently seized territory in chaotic Libya.

IS, which is losing ground on several fronts in Syria and Iraq, is also battling to prevent some of the thousands of foreign volunteers who have joined its ranks since 2014 giving up the fight and going home.

"They sense that we have entered the final stage. Many are starting to send us messages to know how they can return," France's national intelligence coordinator, Didier Le Bret, told AFP.

"Expanding the glorious caliphate is no longer on the agenda and we know that some have been killed while trying to flee," he added.

UPDATE: More from Strategypage.Note especially that the "Syrian" offensive east toward Raqqa is only about half Syrian, with the rest Iranian-supported forces (Shia foreign legion or Hezbollah). Russia is supplying the logistics effort.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!